Sky Links, 8-15-20

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Offended By Faith: The Pandemic Has Exposed an Unbelieving Church
-John Burton

Scrolling through Facebook, I happened upon a simple yet interesting post. One of the comments was even more intriguing.

"Show me the verse in Scripture that says God heals everything but coronavirus."

A sharp-witted respondent typed:

"Matthew 13:58 (ESV): 'And he did not do many mighty works there, because of their unbelief.'"

That's the sobering answer I alluded to. Instead of boldly standing in authoritative opposition to a wicked threat, the common reaction of so many of today's American Christians seems to be unbelief.

Those who are to be driven by fearless faith are instead shaken by the winds of the world.





 

The 34 Month FBI Coverup
-John Spiropoulos
This report focuses on the FBI's 34-month coverup involving the illegal spying on Team Trump.  The report is based on recently declassified FBI documents.





Igor Danchenko and a 34 Month Long DOJ/FBI Cover-Up Operation….
-Sundance 
The aspect of the primary sub-source deconstructing and undermining the underlying material within the Steele Dossier is critical because ultimately the dossier underpinned the FISA application.

When you recognize the FISA application itself was based on a fraudulent premise; and you recognize the intentional ignoring of the underlying evidence; then the motive behind the FISA becomes clear. The FISA against Carter Page was used as a justification for surveillance of Donald Trump that had been ongoing by Obama intelligence officials.

This context becomes stunningly more important when you look at how the FISA was used by the Mueller investigation to continue its weaponization throughout 2017 and even into 2018. Remember, in July of 2018 long after the source material was debunked, the special counsel office was still telling the FISA court the predication for the FISA application and renewals was valid.

Drive this point home.

This is a key to understanding the scope of how weaponized the Mueller team was.

In July of 2018 the special counsel resistance group was lying to the FISA court in order to protect the cornerstone document that permitted them to weaponize the intelligence apparatus.





John Spiropoulos (2019) explains the Clinesmith information
One important fact getting overlooked in all the discussion of whether FBI Attorney Kevin Clinesmith’s guilty plea represents the sacrifice of a minor criminal so the ringleaders can escape justice or the beginning of the end for those who were running the show is exactly whose show Clinesmith was a part of when the crime he’s admitted committing occurred.

You see, Clinesmith wasn’t working for James Comey on June 19, 2017, the date he altered that CIA email inconveniently identifying Trump’s onetime foreign policy advisor Carter Page as a trusted source.

By that point in time, Clinesmith was part of Robert Mueller’s Independent Counsel investigation.

And it was Mueller’s crew who made use of the illegitimately obtained renewal of the FISA warrant to spy on Page that Clinesmith’s willingness to commit forgery enabled.






The Racism of the ‘Anti-Racist’ Movement
-John Stossel with Larry Elder
The biggest problem facing the black community today, says Elder, is the absence of fathers. In the 1960s, most black children were raised in two-parent households. That changed when our government’s war on poverty began.

The handouts sent the message that it’s the government’s job, not your responsibility, to take care of you and your kids. “A mother with two children makes more money than she would make on minimum wage because of all the goodies she gets through the welfare state!”

Now, he says, Black Lives Matter actually encourages the breakup of families. Their website does say, “disrupt the Western-prescribed, nuclear family.”

That’s a Karl Marx idea straight from “The Communist Manifesto.” Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors proudly describes herself as a “trained Marxist.”

Elder calls her and the anti-capitalist protesters “phonies.”








Chauvin, Lane, Kueng, and Thao: The George Floyd Fall Guys
-George Parry
As I have tried to make clear, by calling twice for an ambulance, the officers did all that they could to, in the words of the above training illustration, combine their “law enforcement control measures” with “immediate sedative medical intervention to attempt to reduce the risk of death.” In short, the brief and disturbing video that launched a thousand riots did not show police officers brazenly and sadistically killing Floyd. It in fact showed them following their training to do the best they could to save Floyd from the consequences of his own self-destructive behavior and drug abuse.

In terms of the criminal charges against them, the very existence of the foregoing MPD training materials and protocols and the defendants’ strict adherence to them in their treatment of Floyd refute any notion that they had criminal intent or desire to cause him harm. The officers’ compliance with their official training proves just the opposite.

Despite the fact that these wrongfully accused men deserve to have all charges dismissed immediately, it would be the rare judge indeed with enough courage and integrity to call a halt to this hideously ill-conceived and corrupt prosecution. Their fate most likely will come down to the roll of the dice in a jury trial. That they will be forced to gamble their liberty in such a torturous and unpredictable game of chance is in and of itself an outrage and disgrace.

But, beyond the fate of these innocent defendants, there are broader questions to be asked. To what extent did Minneapolis officialdom’s cowardly and hypocritical rush to abandon and condemn these police officers lend credibility to the neo-Marxist lie that “All Cops Are Bastards” and fuel the anti-police passions that have been stoked by professional agitators across the nation? Would the agitators have been so successful in causing nationwide mayhem if Mayor Frey, Chief Arradondo, or even a single member of the Minneapolis City Council had publicly acknowledged the plain, undeniable truth that, far from murdering Floyd, these police officers were acting pursuant to their official MPD training to reduce his risk of sudden death? Could that possibly have given the frenzied news media pause or helped to counter the anti-police propaganda?

Think about those questions and the possible answers the next time another George Floyd memorial riot breaks out.





 




Why Democrats Have Started To Cave On Reopening Schools
-Joy Pullmann
The pressure to reopen schools is on everywhere now that New York is doing it. This means something else big: Their hard opposition to school reopenings is politically devastating for Democrats.

Reopening means swimming against their anti-Trump base and teachers union donors’ full-court press to amp school funding and slash teacher duties. That means the below-surface financial and political pressure Cuomo, Pelosi, and Schumer are under to make this kind of a reversal must be huge. It’s likely coming from not only internal polling but also early information about just how many people have left New York and New York City, as well as interpersonal intelligence from their influential social circles.

This means three things. First, the pressure to reopen schools is on everywhere now that New York is doing it. Second, Democrats’ hard opposition to school reopenings has been politically devastating. Third, all the push polls and media scaremongering promoting the idea that most parents shouldn’t and wouldn’t send their kids back to school have failed.

One of the most significant reasons it failed is that parents’ experience with online pandemic schooling was a horror show. Another is that private schools have clearly outpaced public schools’ response to coronavirus. That’s both in offering quality online instruction when forced to close, and in seeking to remain open as much and as safely as possible, all while teachers unions have been staging embarrassing tantrums over people on public payroll actually having to do their jobs to get paid, even though epidemiologists have noted “there is no recorded case worldwide of a teacher catching the coronavirus from a pupil.”





-Elijah Schaffer
After YouTube banned this video for inappropriate content, our digital team worked out a deal with them to allow us to re-air this episode with certain disclaimers. Therefore, I must inform you that some medical opinions in this show do not follow WHO, CDC, and local health official recommendations for treating C19. Any and all statements should be taken with precaution. Viewer discretion is advised.







Dr. Scott Atlas disputes COVID-19 fear mongering tactics from our health officials
-KUSI News




-Sophie Mann
Dr. Sonia Angell's resignation comes as California contends with an enormous data glitch in its infectious disease recording system.

Angell's departure comes as the state government reckons with a data glitch that failed to log nearly 300,000 infectious disease testing records, resulting in hindered decision-making at the highest levels of the California government. 

The secretary of California Health and Human Services, Mark Ghaly, recently apologized to state residents for the error. "Bottom line, our data system failed," said Ghaly. With more than half a million reported cases of the virus, California tops the nation for positive diagnoses. The data blunder, however, has impeded state authorities' ability to determine policies moving forward, specifically the decision on whether to reopen schools for in-person learning as the new school year is set to begin. 








Bill Gates says hydroxychloroquine has 'severe side effects,' but little evidence they're common
-Daniel Payne
Bill Gates this week added more flame to the fire in the ongoing debate over the usage of hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19, claiming that using the drug to treat the coronavirus carries with it the risk of "severe side effects" and arguing that medical officials should instead pursue the numerous "good therapeutic drugs" currently in development. 

Yet there is at present little evidence that "severe side effects" are common in COVID-19 patients who take hydroxychloroquine, with the majority of reported adverse events being relatively mild and only a small fraction of reported effects so far being dangerous and/or fatal. 

The drug, which has been used for years to treat malaria and other conditions like lupus, has been at the center of a medical and political firestorm since March when President Trump touted the medicine as a possible effective treatment for coronavirus. Numerous medical officials have claimed that it offers no benefit to COVID-19 patients, while others have insisted that it is highly effective when used in certain circumstances, specifically on high-risk patients early in the course of the disease. 






Attorney Jenna Ellis | Defending Pastor MacArthur in California, Discusses Religious Liberty In California
-Eric Metaxas





-Aaron Renn
The Curious Case of Ben Sasse

Nebraska’s Republican Senator Ben Sasse is an Evangelical and is someone who’s a darling among the Christian establishment set. 

Sasse, despite all of his pretention to moral superiority, despite his constant anti-Trump preening, despite all of his Evangelical faith, despite being a US senator, is unwilling to stand up in the public square and say unpopular things to confront the serious problems in America, ones not amenable to uncontroversial feel-good solutions like “consume less.”

In this curious blend of moral posturing and play it safe proclamations, Sasse is very representative of what’s probably the dominant strain of Evangelical thinking today. So it’s worth exploring what that is - and why it exists.

The Three Worlds

Ben Sasse is a conservative exemplar of what I term “neutral world” Christianity. In my framework, there are three worlds we’ve seen in my lifetime related to the status of Christianity and traditional Christian norms in society.

1. Positive World (Pre-1994). To be seen as a religious person and one who exemplifies traditional Christian norms is a social positive. Christianity is a status enhancer. In some cases failure to embrace those norms hurt
you.

2. Neutral World (1994-2014). Christianity is seen as a socially neutral attribute. It no longer had dominant status in society, but to be seen as a religious person is not a knock either. It’s more like a personal affectation or hobby. Traditional norms of behavior retain residual force.

3. Negative World (2014-). In this world, being a Christian is a social negative, especially in high status positions.

-------------------------

People are going to be forced to make choices, across a wide spectrum of domains. I’m afraid current trends indicate that Christian leaders are going to make the wrong ones. We already know from the past that social gospel style Christianity is a gateway to apostasy. That’s where the trend is heading here. 

I was speaking with one pastor who is a national council member of the Gospel Coalition. He’s a classic neutral worlder who strongly disapproves of Trump. But he notes that the Millennials in his congregation are in effect Biblically illiterate and have a definition of God’s justice that is taken from secular leftist politics. They did not, for example, see anything at all problematic about Hillary Clinton and her views. A generation or so from now when these people are the leaders, they won’t be people keeping unpopular positions to themselves. They won’t have any unpopular positions to hide. They will be completely assimilated to the world. Only their ethics will no longer be Hillary's, but the new fashion du jour. 

Rather than a mass blowout then, Evangelicalism would thus die from a slow bleed, much as the mainlines and the Church of England did before them. Indeed, today’s Evangelicals are retracing the steps of the mainlines. The parallels with the late 19th/early 20th centuries are there and should be studied. Back then, for example, virtually all of the sophisticated intellectual and cultural types – the cultural engagers of their day – sided with the world and became today’s liberal mainlines. Many of the ones who remained orthodox, like Gresham Machen, paid a huge price for doing so – largely inflicted by their erstwhile brethren who assimilated. As it turns out, intellectuals are very easy to co-opt with a few trinkets. It looks like it’s happening again. Almost every Evangelical institution I know is explicitly reformulating itself around secular social gospel principles, even if they wouldn’t use those words to describe it. There will be residual beliefs in place, but over time they could dissipate to nothing. (Remember, the liberal mainlines didn’t go from A to B overnight. It was a long process. For example, earlier this year I read a book by famed early 20th century liberal preacher Henry Emerson Fosdick that contained things so reactionary that even many “conservative” pastors today would be unwilling to write them). 

Practically speaking, folks like Ben Sasse might obtain great sinecures for themselves, but they will never effect any real, positive change in the world. And their attractiveness to others will dwindle over time and their Christianity will fade into the background and ultimately disappear. On the conservative side, we already see this happening in the form of JD Vance, a younger guy in the Sasse mold, but one who holds to a curiously vague Christianity. All we really know about his beliefs is that he doesn’t like rural Pentecostalism. The more liberal types are already cultural epigones. They have nothing to offer the world that I can’t already get in a better form direct from the secular source. 

How does this relate to masculinity, you might ask? Again, because embracing a loss of status, saying unpopular things that will get you in trouble – these things take balls. 

The world is shifting, to crib from Leon Podles, from an irenic age to an “agonistic” (Greek agon = struggle, contest, fight) one. This will require the masculine virtues, ones in desperately short supply in the church. The template is Paul, who was one tough hombre. Paul was a Jewish blueblood on the fast track to high council membership who threw it all way to endure beatings, imprisonment, etc. (One of the underappreciated virtues of Paul is just how physically and mentally tough that guy was). He said he counted it all as loss for the surpassing worth of knowing Christ. He also someone who could say, “I have not shunned to declare unto you the whole counsel of God.” 

But Paul wasn’t agonstic in the religious right sense. I took an inventory of every single command he issued in the New Testament and divided them into various categories. They are overwhelmingly concerned with unity in the church and personal holiness. There are remarkably few commands that concern the outside world at all, and most of them involve accommodating oneself to it with the least possible disruption (be in subjection to the governing authorities, pay your taxes, try to remain at peace with all men, etc). Although his mission brought him in conflict with the world, fighting with the world was not on his agenda. And he did not try to change any secular political policies. He held people to a very high bar within the church, but the world outside the church, apart from seeking converts, was not much of a concern. 

That’s just a bit of stimulating your thinking. It’s not a strategy or theological argument. But the church and others in society need to get a lot tougher – tougher physically, mentally, spiritually. And the church needs the manly virtues of enduring suffering, hardship, and having values that are higher than worldly social status and success – people who stand on solid rock, not who have a finger in the air to see which direction the wind is blowing so they can conform. 

If this generation of Evangelical leaders doesn’t develop that masculine strength within them, then they may ultimately be the generation that led their flock off down the well-trodden roadway that leads to apostasy. 

For those readers who aren’t Christian, that might be a good riddance. But remember Trump. The shift to agonistic is already ongoing in the culture, and not channeled by a Christian worldview. Good luck trying to deal with the fallout.


Aaron Renn, Masculinist Newsletter Archives





Hollywood protestors speak out on child trafficking - Save The Children Protest (Part 6) *Language advisory*






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